The Common Narrative

Conventional wisdom suggests that seeking external validation is a negative thing. Society loves to highlight negative examples of those who suffer the consequences of external-validation seeking. Among the common array of images, we have:

1. Insecure teenaged girls suffering from anorexia, craving online validation that their thighs have a sufficient gap.
2. Men injecting grams of steroids, competing for attention from women at clubs whom they see as sexual targets of conquest and future tales to tell their fraternal brethren.
3. The richest elites purchasing new luxury cars and private jets to compete with their peers' ostentatiousness.

And, admittedly, with images like the above in mind, it's easy to see why external validation can be a big negative: It can lead to irrational behavior and a lack of true life satisfaction. The suggested cure? Go in the opposite direction to internal validation.

In this cure, we do things for our inner spirit instead: We learn to love ourselves, to pursue our passions, to appreciate life for its own sake, all outside of what others think. By simply using internal validation, we motivate ourselves to exercise, to eat right, to raise a stable and loving family, and to work a meaningful job. By shifting our priorities from the corrupting influence of the outside world to our inner mind, we can follow our righteous insticts to live a better life.

This idea right here, to put it bluntly, is bullshit. This cure is a wild Hail Mary that banks on a person being preconfigured with all the right inner instincts. For those who aren't so lucky, it's more like a poison.

The Negative Extreme of Internal Validation

If we are to examine internal validation with the same illustrative flavor which was used to describe examples of external validation, we have:

1. People sitting on their couch, binge-watching Survivor or The Bachelor, seven days a week.
2. Skill-less artists pursuing careers in the arts, only to wind up living paycheck-to-paycheck, unable to become financially secure.
3. Manchildren addicted to video games, living in their parents' house, uninterested in becoming a productive member of society.
4. Drug addicts chasing their next hit and criminals chasing their next victim, both hungry for their next thrill.

In response to these examples, one might wonder: If people truly relied on internal validation, wouldn’t that eliminate their seeking of (external) pleasures in examples one, three, and even four? The answer is no—unless we're adopting a rigid definition of internal validation which few people subscribe to. The public evangelists of internal validation are not suggesting we live as Tibetan monks, detached from all sources of external enjoyment but rather that we not seek external interpersonal validation.¹

Internal validation can lead, just as external validation, to the wrong outcomes. Just as outsiders can convince the impressionable teenaged girl to want to starve herself until completely emaciated, so can one convince their own self to want wrong things. After all, humans across the board are notoriously bad at knowing what to want.²

The Power of External Validation

While we have shown that internal validation can also lead to wrong outcomes, that doesn't mean that external validation can lead to positive outcomes. So can it? I'll let the below examples of externally-facing desires speak for themselves:

• Wanting to be a great parent and see your child's face light up when you congratulate them after a great sports performance.
• Wanting to be recognized at work for your efforts in turning around the organization's finances.
• Wanting to be complimented by your partner for your meticulously planned, romantic dinner.

That's all external validation. All of it.

External validation can even be used as a tool to increase happiness, and I speak from expert experience. During my time out as a high school drop-out, I was internally validating to the extreme. I played video games exhaustively, ate the most dopamine-surging food (a bag of Hostess mini-donuts was a typical breakfast), and didn't work to impress others. I was fairly content in daily life, but underneath the usual contentedness was deep dissatisfaction that would only become worse as I got older.

It was a desire for external validation that drove me to course-correct and do the following:

• Graduate a reasonably esteemed college, so as to earn the respect of employers.
• Specialize in programming, so as to be economically productive to society.
• Develop my interpersonal skills and sense of humor, so as to be personable.
• Adopt a consistent fitness routine, so as to build strength and avoid the appearance of physical (and figurative) weakness.
• Avoid junk food, so as to ensure I do not become overweight and suffer a reverse halo effect.
• Write blog posts, so as to demonstrate a creative and analytical mindset.

All of these items above have been a positive in my life, and I am happier than ever before, despite now transitioning from being highly internally-validating to being highly externally-validating.

The Simple Truth

The simple truth is that there is no victor in the battle between internal and external validation. Both can be lead to good, and both can lead to bad. The key question with respect to adopting any activity or behavior in one's life is whether the given item has a correlation with positive life outcomes. That's harder to measure, and it requires case-by-case analysis.

For both better and worse, life is just a little trickier than what a simple one-dimensional internal-versus-external, good-versus-bad model lead us to believe.

Footnotes